We are one, We are many, We are Just Call Me Frank.
Candid, adjudicating, philosophy wielding, life journaling, mental health advocating, writing and art therapy enthusiasts, lovers of learning; adventurers with a finger on all the buttons.
Writing to survive and thrive.

Sunday, July 20, 2014

Don't Freak Out, We're Reading Your Tweets

Writing has been slow (because we haven't been doing it), as we've been doing a lot of painting this summer/year - we're working on number ten. The goal for the year is 12, but once classes start again this fall there just won't be time to paint.
Painting has also been very therapeutic, as usual. So that's good, and lends to less writing.
It's providing a lot of time to think about things...and people...in between trying to get shadows and angles right.

But we're not here today to talk about painting, or writing. Nope. We're here to talk about reading tweets.

Tweets. Wow. Pretty sure it's been literally years since we've done a post on social media. Back in the day they used to occur fairly often. It all changes so fast now to actually be relevant weeks later though, so it's not a great use of writing time.

Anyway.

In case you're freaking out because all of a sudden it seems like we're reading your Tweets, or reading them more than usual, (you'll know if we've been giving you "stars" [for your interesting/sick/funny/insightful/good tweets] when we previously haven't) there's something you should know.

After Twitter's most recent update it was nearly impossible to see the Tweets of the people we follow, but for all of the Retweets. (soooo many retweets... - and a lot of people aren't exactly judicious in selecting what they retweet...ya know?)
Talk about unmanageable. And repetitive. AND, it kinda sucks the ability to see the Tweets of people chosen to read by following them back. Not to mention when you only have 10 or 20 minutes on a break at work...forgettaboutit.

It's not that retweets are bad. We LOVE to see them actually (the good ones, anyway), but when they again) after the last update we had to take "drastic" measures.

ended up in the lists (
So, over the past two weeks or so we've been turning off everybody's retweets.

Wait. It's not so bad. Don't be angry (some people think it's a bad thing to have their retweets turned off)!

They're almost all turned off now. It was a lot of work, but it was worth it.

NOW, we just go to people's timelines/bio page and see RTs that way, and then, of course, there are the retweets in lists. Lists, which we have always found to be essential to the enjoyment of Twitter. Organize. Organize. Organize.

So, what this means is we see the actual Tweets of the people we follow in our timeline stream now, and that's it, which makes it much more fun/interesting/efficient...but also, it might creep you out...because now we can cover more ground and read YOUR Tweets.